


Invisible Lines

by linndechir



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26346952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: They'd spent countless evenings together, but Jim had never asked Adam to stay the night. It felt like crossing one last line they needed to keep between them. But then the power goes down in half the city, and Jim doesn't want Adam sneaking home while every cop in Prague is on edge.
Relationships: Adam Jensen/Jim Miller
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51
Collections: Press Start VI





	Invisible Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreadlordTally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreadlordTally/gifts).



“Power grid’s done in half the city,” Jim said into the darkness after hanging up. He wasn’t sure just how good Adam’s enhanced hearing was, if he’d heard the other half of the phone conversation anyway, but it would have felt rude to assume that Adam had been eavesdropping. “It looks like it was a mechanical failure, though, not a terror attack. And the emergency generators at the office are holding up well.”

“Could still be a cover for something else,” Adam’s gruff voice came from somewhere on the couch. 

“True. But until we know what, there’s not much we can do.” The last months had made Jim suspicious, too, but he tentatively hoped that this was simply what it appeared to be. And not only because he was too damn tired for an all-nighter. He knew he could rely on Adam no matter what was actually going on, but for the time being, it looked like all they could do was wait.

It was pitch-black in Jim’s flat and outside, and strangely quiet – there were still some voices here and there, and the occasional wail of a siren, but most of the usual sounds of TVs and music and the hum of electronics had all died down. Almost as if they weren’t in the middle of a city. Jim had lived in this flat long enough that he found his way back to the couch easily in the dark. Judging by the sound of his voice, Adam was still sitting exactly where Jim had left him when the lights had gone out ten minutes ago and he’d called in at TF29.

“Guess that’s my cue to go home and let you get some sleep,” Adam said after an awkward moment of silence.

“It’s late, Adam. Past curfew.”

Jim didn’t need light to imagine the little smile on Adam’s face. They’d had this same conversation almost every evening Adam spent here for … months at this point. Jim would remind him of the curfew, Adam would remind him that it wasn’t a problem for him, Jim would think about insisting and then he never did because somehow making Adam stay over felt like crossing a last invisible line.

It hadn’t started out as anything inappropriate. After London, Adam had checked on him a lot. Jim had been a bit grumpy about it, but Adam had a point – they had no way of knowing if someone wouldn’t be back to try and finish the job, and in those first weeks out of the hospital, Jim had been in no state to defend himself. So Adam had started coming by, and Jim had offered him a drink because it would have been rude not to, and they’d talked because he wasn’t going to have Adam stand around in silence like a paid bodyguard when Adam was doing this in his free time.

Somehow it had become a habit, even after things had calmed down in the aftermath, even once Jim managed to sleep through the night again without every sound making him suspect an assassin on the doorstep. But Adam had kept coming by, sometimes with take-away, sometimes with a bottle of booze, sometimes with the paperwork Jim kept snapping at him to finish. He’d kept coming by like they were friends and there was nothing unusual about spending their evenings together.

A few weeks into that, Jim had realised just how little he’d known about Adam. He’d always _liked_ him – Adam, or still Jensen as he’d thought of him in the beginning, had been a pain in the arse, but the kind of man Jim thoroughly respected. He’d occasionally even felt as if he knew Adam better than he really did. But it was only in those weeks after London that he found out that Adam’s sport of choice was baseball (Jim spent one evening letting Adam explain the rules and intricacies of it to him, and then decided that it was stupid). He hadn’t known that, while Adam didn’t care much for art and literature, he was exceptionally well read in criminal law and psychology, even for a former cop. Or that while Adam didn’t seem to have ever touched a video game, he was strangely familiar with quite a few of the games he found on Jim’s shelf. Jim half suspected an ex with similar interests in Adam’s past, but he knew better than to ask. Adam had spent most of his life in Detroit, surely he’d left more than a few memories behind there. That was another thing Jim knew nothing about – Adam’s friends and exes and family, if he was still in touch with anyone back home, and if not, if it was because of the Incident or something earlier than that.

And then there’d been the time when Jim had managed to break his watch in a small fit of rage at the office. He’d grumbled and complained about it in the evening, and for once he’d been going on about Mac rather than about Adam himself. Adam had taken a long look at the watch, and the next evening he’d shown up with a set of tiny tools and spent several hours taking Jim’s watch apart and putting it back together. He’d been focused and concentrated in a way Jim wouldn’t have though possible, considering how sloppy Adam’s paperwork was, and the little smile Adam had given him when he passed him the repaired watch had made Jim’s chest tighten like he was twenty years younger. That too hadn’t been something Jim had known. And the more things he found out about Adam, the more he realised that maybe he should have put a stop to all this once it hadn’t been necessary anymore. That maybe he should have reminded them both that Adam was, above all, his subordinate, not his friend, and certainly not anything else.

That was why he’d kept letting Adam go, all those nights past curfew, trusting that Adam knew what he was doing. He wasn’t sure which one of them he didn’t trust if Adam stayed the night. Jim rubbed the back of his neck. Oh, damn it all.

“You know the Prague police are only going to be more trigger-happy tonight,” he said. “With something like this happening, they’ll shoot at every shadow they see. Just take the couch.”

Something shifted in the air between them and Jim wasn’t sure if he was relieved or worried that he couldn’t see the expression on Adam’s face. Knowing Adam, it was probably carefully neutral anyway. Jim half expected an argument, but after a few moments Adam made a gruff sound that could have been agreement.

Jim should have turned away and fetched him a blanket and a pillow, bid him good night and gone upstairs to sleep. Instead he sighed and sat back down. He’d miscalculated their earlier positions on the couch, though, because he ended up far too close to Adam, and only noticed once his thigh brushed past Adam’s leg on the way down.

That was another unspoken line they didn’t cross – they didn’t _touch_. Not accidentally, not when Adam seemed as perfectly aware and in control of his body as few people Jim had ever met, and sure as hell not on purpose. Maybe that was why Jim was so struck by it that he missed that second when he could have laughed it off and shuffled to the side, and instead he stayed right where he was, thigh and shoulder and arm pressed against Adam’s. Even through several layers of clothes, the texture of Adam’s body felt strange.

Even through several layers of clothes, it sent a shiver of heat through Jim. Fuck.

Adam shifted a little next to him. His thigh was impossibly hard, but the way he moved still felt infallibly human, not at all like touching a machine. And when he turned his head, Jim could feel Adam’s hot breath on his skin. It had been a couple of hours since Adam’s last cigarette – Jim didn’t let him smoke in his flat – and underneath the lingering smell of smoke Adam smelt so damn good. Some cologne Jim couldn’t place, or maybe it was whatever he used to style his beard and his hair. The scent had never struck him as particularly intense, but maybe he’d just never been so close. Or maybe it was the lack of sight that heightened his other senses, that made him so impossibly aware of how close Adam was.

“I … I should have a torch somewhere,” he said after – he wasn’t sure after how long, only that he had to say something before he _did_ something. “You don’t know the place as well as I do.”

“It’s fine,” Adam said. His voice was so very quiet, a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through his body and Jim’s everywhere they touched.

“Right, you can – you can basically see in the dark, can’t you?” Jim tried to remember what exactly the files said about Adam’s optical augmentations, the technical details of it. Maybe it’d manage to distract him. Maybe it would be a good reminder of just how thoroughly augmented Adam was, and Jim had never been into that. Sure, Adam was impossibly handsome, but the arms and the legs and the eyes were … a _lot_. If it were anyone else, Jim doubted he’d be sitting here trying desperately to think of something else but how close Adam’s lips were in the dark.

“Infrared, which is useful in a fight, but … not really how you want to look at the world the rest of the time.” Adam gave a minute shrug, but they were so close that Jim could feel it. He was acutely aware that Adam wouldn’t have given that answer just a few weeks ago – he’d just stuck to the facts. He was still cagey about how he felt about his augs most of the time, though, and this was certainly more than Jim had ever heard him admit. “Can’t see as well in the dark as in light, if that’s what you’re imagining.”

“Still means that you’ll be the one to get us another bottle once we finish this one,” Jim said. It was strangely comfortable, ordering Adam around even when they were alone like this, maybe because for all that he was his subordinate, Adam was a cocky, disobedient fuck who did what he wanted half the time. Except Jim knew what a dangerous road that was to go down on – he’d had that thought more than once, that despite Adam being his subordinate, Adam being an Aug in Prague, Adam’s entire life and existence hinging on the fact that Jim wouldn’t try to fuck with him … Adam would say no if he didn’t want him, wouldn’t he? Because Adam had never been shy about saying no to Jim, so why would he be now? You couldn’t take advantage of a man who wouldn’t let himself be taken advantage of and that – that was the kind of thought that usually led to Jim frantically jerking off in his bed while he imagined Adam growling against his neck, and then feeling like shit afterwards because the last thing either of them needed in their lives right now was … whatever this would be. A stupid affair they’d have to hide from everyone in their lives. Something without a future, and Jim knew himself well enough to know that what he wanted from Adam was so far beyond a quick fuck on the couch they’d never mention again.

He was staring at Adam, he knew that, but in the dark it didn’t matter. He couldn’t even see Adam, and Adam couldn’t see him looking. He wondered if Adam could tell that Jim’s heart was beating faster, or how tense he was. He wondered if –

Adam pressed his leg more firmly against Jim’s thigh, and Jim could feel him move against him a split second before Adam’s hand was on his forearm, bared since he’d rolled up his sleeves earlier that evening. It was as if a jolt of electricity went through his entire nervous system. He’d never felt Adam’s hands on his skin before – that strange, slightly rough texture of his fingers, the smooth carbon of his palms.

“I don’t think we should drink another bottle, Jim.” 

He said Jim’s name like it meant something more than that, low and heavy between them, still so close that they breathed the same air. Jim found himself gravitate towards him, their shoulders pressing close until it was almost uncomfortable, and then Adam shifted, put his arm up on the backrest of the couch – he wasn’t even touching Jim, just letting him slip even closer into his personal space. 

If he’d been able to see him – to look at him, at those beautiful, artificial eyes that still had far fewer lines around them than Jim’s did, at his neatly styled, stupid beard that Jim would have found off-putting on any other man … he told himself that he would have been more sensible in the light of day. But it was so very dark, and so quiet that he didn’t hear a single sound but Adam’s uncannily even breathing and the pounding of his own heart in his ears. Like there was nothing else left in the world. No job to go back to in the morning, where he’d have to send Adam on missions that might get him killed. No streets out there on which Adam might on any given day get murdered for something he couldn’t change. No custody battle during which Jim having an affair with a younger colleague wouldn’t look good at all.

It was all so very far away, and Jim was so very tired of having to care about it all. They really shouldn’t drink another bottle, but he was starting to think that it wouldn’t make a difference anymore.

Adam’s hand was strangely warm on his forearm. Somehow he’d imagined Adam’s augs to be much cooler. It felt utterly foreign and yet oddly appealing when Adam ran his fingertips over Jim’s forearm, down to the inside of his wrist. Jim had never thought he was particularly sensitive there until Adam caressed the thin skin lightly, then let his fingers slip over Jim’s palm. Jim had seen Adam kill countless men with those hands, in a variety of frankly disturbing ways. They were so tender now, their touch so soft that it would have been the easiest thing in the world to pull his hand away, to clear his throat and get up and tell him he was going to sleep, just like Adam had suggested.

The easiest thing in the world and yet the hardest. Jim didn’t move a muscle, and Adam clearly took his lack of objection as an invitation, slipped his palm against Jim’s and let their fingers intertwine. Such a small touch. It should have been nothing. It shouldn’t have felt like his whole world was crumbling down around him, like he was crossing every remaining line at the same time and hurling himself down an abyss he’d never be able to climb out of again. 

It was dark, and silent, and maybe that should have made this feel less real. Maybe that’s why he could allow it, why he turned his head when Adam’s other hand came to rest on the back of his neck, why he parted his lips when Adam whispered his name and breached the last inch between them before Adam could.

He could have lied to himself and told him it would just be tonight, a stolen secret in the dark. But tomorrow the lights would come on again, and he knew very well that they’d never be able to walk away from this. 

Adam’s lips were warm and tender on his, his beard scraped slightly over Jim’s own stubble, and Jim all but melted against him like he’d been waiting for this for far longer than a few months. He didn’t want to put an end to this. Nothing had made him cross those lines but his own decisions, and they could find a way to deal with the consequences tomorrow.


End file.
